Poets, like whores, are only hated by each other.

Marrying to increase love is like gaming to become rich; alas, you only lose what little stock you had before.

Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.

Women of quality are so civil, you can hardly distinguish love from good breeding.

Mistresses are like books; if you pore upon them too much, they doze you and make you unfit for company; but if used discreetly, you are the fitter for conversation by em.

Thy books should, like thy friends, not many be, yet such wherein men may thy judgment see.

Your women of honor, as you call em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons; and 'Tis scandal that they would avoid, not men.

Bluster, sputter, question, cavil; but be sure your argument be intricate enough to confound the court.

Go to your business, pleasure, whilst I go to my pleasure, business.

Good fellowship and friendship are lasting, rational and manly pleasures.

Come, for my part I will have only those glorious, manly pleasures of being very drunk, and very slovenly.

Hunger, revenge, to sleep are petty foes, But only death the jealous eyes can close.

I have heard people eat most heartily of another man's meat, that is, what they do not pay for.

I weigh the man, not his title; 'tis not the king's stamp can make the metal better.

He's a fool that marries, but he's a greater that does not marry a fool; what is wit in a wife good for, but to make a man a cuckold?

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.

Wit is more necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.

Poets, like whores, are only hated by each other.

Women serve but to keep a man from better company.

Next to the pleasure of finding a new mistress is that of being rid of an old one.

Ceremony and great professing renders friendship as much suspect as it does religion.

Good fellowship and friendship are lasting rational and manly pleasures.

A good name is seldom got by giving it oneself.

Your women of honor, as you call em, are only chary of their reputations, not their persons; and Tis scandal that they would avoid, not men.

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.

Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot.

In every age poets and social reformers have tried to stimulate the people of their own time to a nobler life by enchanting stories of the virtues of the heroes of old.

I wonder what all those Chinese poets sound like in Chinese. I like their distilled quality.

There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die.

A Shakespeare could have arisen only on English soil. In the same way, your great dramatists and poets express the nature and essence of the Norwegian people, but they also express that which is universally valid for all mankind.

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.

In working on a poem, I love to revise. Lots of younger poets don't enjoy this, but in the process of revision I discover things.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.

Children can write poetry and then, unless they're poets, they stop when reach puberty.

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.

The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.

Nations are born in the hearts of poets, they prosper and die in the hands of politicians.

People wish to be poets more than they wish to write poetry, and that's a mistake. One should wish to celebrate more than one wishes to be celebrated.

Poets are born, not paid.

Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance.

I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.

We have to raise the consciousness; the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace.

At the age of 18 all young poets are sure they will be dead at 21 - of old age.

And some poets are far better read off the page because they're very bad speakers. I'm thinking of one in particular whom I won't name, a good poet, and he reads in such a dry, boring way, your eyes start drooping.

Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.

Well, we all start thinking we're going to be Romantic rock stars, but then reality hits and you realize no one reads you but other poets.

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.